You can recover unpaid wages, overtime, tips in California if you know your rights and how to enforce them. Does your employer owe you unpaid wages or overtime? Or, maybe you need information on the breaks you’re entitled to, overtime rules, or your right to tips. If so, find out here on this site what you can do in California to get the money you have earned

Answers to those and other questions about wage and hour law in California are right here on this site. You will find out about:

1. Wage and hour laws differ from state to state.

Most states have enacted their own wage and hour regulations and procedures for employees to follow if they have been treated unfairly. These regulations and procedures vary from state to state. Start by finding out about your rights to pay in California.

What is the minimum wage in California?

The minimum wage is the least you can be paid per hour, by law. You are entitled to earn at least the highest minimum wage that applies to you, whether the standard is federal, state, or local. For example, the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25. If your city or state has passed a law setting a higher minimum wage, your employer must pay you at least that higher amount per hour; it cannot pay you the lower federal minimum wage instead.

The minimum wage represents gross earnings: earnings before deductions, such as tax withholding, are taken. Your actual take-home pay may be less than the minimum wage.

The minimum wage in California is $10 an hour. Because this is higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, employees in California must be paid at least $10 an hour.

A handful of local governments in California have passed ordinances establishing a higher minimum wage. If you work in one of these cities or counties, you are entitled to earn the higher local minimum wage amount:

Berkeley: $11

Emeryville: $14.44

Los Angeles: $10

Los Angeles County: $10

Mountain View: $11

Oakland: $12.55

Palo Alto: $11

Richmond: $11.52

San Francisco: $12.25

San Jose: $10.30

Santa Clara: $11

Santa Monica: $10

Sunnyvale: $10.30

In some localities, the minimum wage is slightly lower for smaller employers and employers who contribute a certain amount to employee benefits. Contact your city or county government office to learn the details of your local minimum wage law.

Who earns overtime?

You qualify for overtime pay if:

you are paid by the hour

you are not exempt (for example, because you hold a “white collar” job), and

you work over 40 hours in a workweek (or 8 hours in a workday in some states).

How do I calculate my hourly wage?

To calculate your hourly wage, take the total amount you are paid (whether by the hour, as a salary, by piece rate, or on commission) in a pay period, such as one workweek. Divide that total amount by the total number of regular time (not overtime) hours you worked to earn that money. Be sure to count every hour you worked, including time spent working from home (if allowed by your employer) and any break time for which you should be paid, including breaks that lasted 20 minutes or less and breaks during which you had to work. The hourly rate that you come up with must be at least the minimum wage in California.

What is a tip credit?

A tip credit is the amount of tips you earn that your employer can count towards its obligation to pay you the minimum wage.

An employer that is allowed to take a tip credit can pay you less than the regular minimum wage, as long as you earn enough in tips to bring your hourly compensation up to at least the minimum wage. Under federal law, for example, the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but employers may pay tipped employees as little as $2.13 an hour, as long as the employee earns at least the rest in tips. An employer taking advantage of this lower minimum wage is taking a tip credit of $5.12 an hour.

Not all states allow employers to take a tip credit. Some states that allow a tip credit set the minimum tipped wage amount at $2.13 an hour, like federal law; others have established a higher tipped minimum wage. To find out whether your state allows a tip credit (and, if so, for how much), see What are My Rights to Tips in California?

Are tip pools legal?

Does your employer require you to pool tips? Tip pooling, sometimes called tip sharing or tipping out, is a common practice in establisments where only some employees receive tips directly from customers, especially restaurants.

In a tip pool, tipped employees put a certain amount or percentage of their tips into a pot, which is then shared among a group of employees. Whether a tip pool is legal depends on who shares in the pool, among other things.

The general rule is that tips belong to the employee who received them. However, employees can be required to pay part of their tips into a tip sharing arrangement, as long as it meets these legal requirements:

The employer may not share in the tip pool.

Only employees who regularly and customarily receive tips may share in the tip pool. For example, wait staff, bussers, and bartenders may be part of the tip pool, but "back of the house" employees -- like cooks and dishwashers -- may not.

Only the amount of tips an employee actually takes home counts towards any employer tip credit. In other words, if an employee has to share tips, the employee's hourly wage includes only what the employee got back from the tip pool, not what the employee had to put into the pot.

Am I entitled to breaks?

Believe it or not, employers in many states have no legal obligation to give their employees any breaks during the work day. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require employers to provide any breaks, and many states follow the same rule. Other states require employers to provide rest breaks, meal breaks, or both.

A small number of states -- California, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington -- require employers to provide paid rest breaks during the work day.

Fewer than half the states require employers to let employees take time off (typically, 30 minutes) to eat a meal. However, employers do not have to pay employees for their meal breaks, as long as the employee does not have to do any work during the break. If you have to work through or during your break, you are entitled to be paid for it. Additionally, under federal law, employees must be paid for any breaks their employer chooses to provide, if they last for 20 minutes or fewer.

How can I enforce my wage and hour rights?

If your employer hasn't paid you overtime, hasn't given you legally required breaks, didn't give you a final paycheck, or has otherwise not paid you everything you are owed, you should take steps to assert your rights. There are three things you can do:

Complain within your company. Use your company's internal complaint process to raise your concerns. Ask the company to investigate and make the situation right. The law protects you from employer retaliation for asserting your wage and hour rights.

File a wage claim. If your company doesn't resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, find out whether your state has an administrative wage claim procedure. In most states, you can file a claim with the state agency that enforces wage and hour laws. Your claim may be investigated, settled, or sent to an administrative hearing, where you can present evidence that you were not paid properly. It's a good idea to talk to an employment lawyer if you are considering filing a wage claim. A lawyer can help you word the complaint properly, present your best evidence persuasively, and reach the best possible outcome -- all while preserving your arguments for court, if things don't work out.

File a lawsuit. If other avenues don't work, you can sue your employer in state or federal court for wage theft. At this point, you will definitely need legal representation to persuade a judge or jury to enter a judgment in your favor.

Checklist: information and documents you will need to file a wage claim

If you decide to file a claim for unpaid wages, be sure you have all of the information and documents you will need, including:

personal information, such as name, birthdate, address, phone number, email address, and Social Security number

name, address, and phone number of your employer

the location where you actually worked (this may be different from the employer’s official address)

your manager’s or the company owner’s name and phone number

a description of the type of work you did or do for the employer

pay stubs or wage statements showing how, when, and how much you were paid for the period in question, and

work hours, shift assignments, or other time records showing hours worked in the period in question.

About this website

Here at Legal Consumer, we want to help people find answers to everyday legal questions about important topics like bankruptcy, Obamacare, inheritance, and more.

Now, we’ve turned our attention to employment law. Because, while almost everyone has (or has had) a job, it can be surprisingly tough to get good, high-quality local information about workplace rights.

Wage and hour questions -- about overtime, minimum wage, tips, paycheck deductions, and more -- come up every day. Your hours for your employer's wages is the basic exchange of the employment relationship. Yet, it can be tough to find accurate, up-to-date, and easily understood information about federal, state, and local wage and hour laws.

On this website, when you choose your state or enter your zip code, you will quickly learn:

the minimum wage where you work

who is eligible for overtime (and how to calculate what you are owed)

when you should get your final paycheck

whether your employer is handling your tips properly

what to do if your employer is violating wage and hour laws,

and more.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to get the information, forms, and resources you need to understand and enforce your wage and hour rights, so you can make sure you are paid, legally and on time, for all of your work.

ADVERTISEMENT - LegalConsumer.com does not endorse or review advertised products or services.

Talk to a Local Wage and Hour Attorney

You are entitled to be paid the minimum wage set by law in California, unless you are exempt, and you have other work pay rights, too. No matter how you are paid in California, whether by hourly wage, salary, commissions, tips, or piece rate, the law in California gives you certain rights. While your employer can pay you in a variety of ways, each manner of payment is regulated by federal law and some states also regulate them. These regulations:

Most employers must pay overtime pay for every hour of overtime an employee works in California, unless the employee is exempt. To figure out if you are entitled to overtime pay for your work in California, these are the questions you need answers to:

Is your employer covered by federal or state overtime pay laws?

Are you eligible for overtime pay under federal or state overtime pay laws?

Are you exempt from overtime pay laws?

How does California regulate overtime pay? and,

What is the overtime pay rate in California?

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires most employers to pay employees 1-1/2 times their regular hourly wage for every hour worked over 40 hours in a workweek, unless the employee is exempt from overtime pay entitlement. So, if you are eligible, you should be paid your regular hourly wage plus 50% of that wage as premium pay for each overtime hour worked.

Most states have their own overtime laws, too, which apply to people working in the state. However, the FLSA sets the minimum standard for overtime pay. So, if a state’s overtime law is less protective of employees, the FLSA standard will be applied to people working in that state.

Are you entitled to earn overtime in California? Even if the answer used to be no, you may soon be eligible: New overtime rules will make overtime pay available to millions more workers.

If you work as a white-collar employee, your eligibility for overtime depends on how much you earn. Previously, office employees who earned less than $455 per week (or $23,660 per year) were automatically eligible for overtime if they worked more than 40 hours per week, regardless of their job duties or how they were paid. But this low wage cutoff left millions of employees out of luck, working long hours for very little pay, but still not entitled to overtime.

All that has changed now. The federal Department of Labor recently issued a final regulation changing the overtime wage cutoff. Starting in December of 2016, the wage limit will more than double. White-collar employees will be entitled to earn overtime when they work more than 40 hours per week if they earn less than $913 per week (or $47,476 per year). This will make more than four million additional employees eligible for overtime than the previous rules.

Although many states allow employers to pay tipped employees less than the minimum wage, California is not among them. In California, your employer must pay you the full hourly minimum wage.

If you earn tips, you should know the rules about

what counts as a tip

how much your employer must pay you in addition to your tips, and

whether and how much you can be required to contribute to a tip sharing arrangement (also called a “tip pool”).

Under federal and California law, tips belong to the employee. An employer can never take employee tips and keep them for itself. In many states, an employer is allowed to take a “tip credit” – to count part of the tips an employee earns towards the employer’s obligation to pay the minimum wage. However, this is not allowed in California, as explained below.

Employers may also be allowed to require employees to share their tips with each other and to pass on certain costs – such as credit card processing fees – to employees by docking their tips.

Is your employer giving you all of the tips to which you are legally entitled? To find out, you first have to understand what money counts as a tip.

Your employer may refer to you as an “independent contractor” (or simply, “contractor”). Under this classification, your employer may claim that you are not entitled to the applicable minimum wage, overtime pay, standard withholdings for social security and other payroll taxes, or workers’ compensation or unemployment insurance. But, employers often misclassify people, intentionally or mistakenly, as independent contractors when they are really employees under the law.

California is one of a handful of states that require employers to provide paid rest breaks to employees.

Although many employees get meal and rest breaks during the workday, these breaks aren’t legally required everywhere. Federal law doesn’t require employers to give employees time off to eat or rest during their shifts. Employees are entitled to these breaks only if their state requires it.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) doesn’t require employers to give breaks, but it does regulate when employers have to pay for breaks they choose to give.

Should Your Breaks Be Paid?

The FLSA requires employers to pay employees for all hours worked, including time the employer may classify as a “break.” An employer does not have to pay for longer meal breaks during which the employee is relieved of all work duties.

Do you have an unpaid internship that feels suspiciously like a job? Although there are certainly legitimate internships throughout the private sector, which provide interns with important opportunities to learn new skills, there are also plenty of scams. Unless your internship meets all six of the requirements explained below, you should be getting paid.

Generally speaking, people who work for a company are entitled to be paid. They are protected by wage and hour laws guaranteeing them the minimum wage, overtime, and so on. Unpaid internships are an exception to this general rule. But an employer may call a work opportunity an internship -- for which they will receive work they don't have to pay for -- only if it truly is an educational opportunity for the intern, rather than just unpaid labor.

If you have an overtime, minimum wage violation, or other wage and hour claim against your employer, you can complain within your company, file a wage claim (in most states), or file a lawsuit to assert your rights.

If your employer has not paid you the full minimum wage, has not paid you overtime you earned, has not paid you for every hour worked, has required you to work through unpaid breaks, or has illegally kept your tips (among other things), you may have a legal claim for wage theft. Below, we explain the most common wage law violations and provide information on how to enforce your right to be paid fairly, and on time, for all of your work.

Common Wage and Overtime Violations

If your employer hasn’t paid you fully for every hour you have worked, you may have legal claims for violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or California wage and hour law. Here are some common wage theft claims.

Minimum Wage

Your employer must pay you at least the highest minimum wage that applies to you, whether federal, state, or local. If you haven’t received at least this much per hour, less any allowed deductions, you may have a claim for unpaid wages.

The minimum wage in California is $10 an hour. Because this is higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, employees in California must be paid at least $10 an hour.

A handful of local governments in California have passed ordinances establishing a higher minimum wage. If you work in one of these cities or counties, you are entitled to earn the higher local minimum wage amount:

Berkeley: $11

Emeryville: $14.44

Los Angeles: $10

Los Angeles County: $10

Mountain View: $11

Oakland: $12.55

Palo Alto: $11

Richmond: $11.52

San Francisco: $12.25

San Jose: $10.30

Santa Clara: $11

Santa Monica: $10

Sunnyvale: $10.30

In some localities, the minimum wage is slightly lower for smaller employers and employers who contribute a certain amount to employee benefits. Contact your city or county government office to learn the details of your local minimum wage law.

Wages for Tipped Employees

Some states allow employers to pay a lower minimum wage to employees who earn tips; others don’t. Either way, you must earn at least the full applicable minimum wage. See What Are My Rights to Tips in California? for more information on California law for tipped employees.

You can find a good employment lawyer to help with your wage claim in California in several ways. A referral from someone you know is the best way to find a lawyer. Ask family members, friends, and co-workers whether they can recommend a good employment lawyer.

Lawyers specialize, so the lawyer who handled your sister’s car accident won’t be the right person to handle your wage claim. However, lawyers also know other lawyers, so don’t hesitate to ask a well-recommended lawyer in a different field for an employment lawyer referral.

If you can’t find a lawyer through personal referrals, here are a couple of other options:

Your employer can garnish your wages in California if ordered to do so. Under federal law, California employers may garnish, or withhold, a portion of an employee’s wages because the employer has been ordered to do so by a court or through some other legal procedure by a creditor.

Your wages may be garnished in California if you have:

unpaid credit card debt and the credit card company seeks repayment

failed to pay child or spousal support

defaulted on a student loan, or

unpaid taxes due and the taxing authority seeks payment.

Wage garnishment happens when an employee has an unpaid debt (unrelated to employment) and the creditor of the debt seeks payment. Generally speaking, your employer must garnish your wages when ordered to do so. But, there are limits on how much of your earnings may be garnished, and on how your employer responds to the garnishment. And, some states set greater limits on the amount of an employee’s wages an employer may garnish than does federal law.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets the “floor” minimum wage for eligible workers in the U.S. But, many states and some local governments set their own minimum wage. Workers are entitled to be paid the highest minimum wage that applies where they work, whether it is set by federal, state, or local law.

The minimum wage in California is $10 an hour. Because this is higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, employees in California must be paid at least $10 an hour.

A handful of local governments in California have passed ordinances establishing a higher minimum wage. If you work in one of these cities or counties, you are entitled to earn the higher local minimum wage amount:

Berkeley: $11

Emeryville: $14.44

Los Angeles: $10

Los Angeles County: $10

Mountain View: $11

Oakland: $12.55

Palo Alto: $11

Richmond: $11.52

San Francisco: $12.25

San Jose: $10.30

Santa Clara: $11

Santa Monica: $10

Sunnyvale: $10.30

In some localities, the minimum wage is slightly lower for smaller employers and employers who contribute a certain amount to employee benefits. Contact your city or county government office to learn the details of your local minimum wage law.

Although California employers do not have to provide paid vacation time to employees, employees in California are entitled to paid sick leave.

Many employers, in California and nationwide, offer paid time off to their employees. As employees, we might take our paid vacation and sick days for granted. However, in most states, employers are under no obligation to provide paid time off. In fact, about one-quarter of employees in the private sector get no paid vacation days, and almost 40% get no paid sick time.

Paid Vacation

Currently, no state requires employers to provide paid vacation or personal leave to employees. If you have an employment agreement that promises you a certain number of paid vacation days, then you may have a contract claim against your employer if it doesn’t provide them. Otherwise, however, California employers may choose whether or not to offer vacation time.

If your employer does provide vacation time, state law determines whether your employer must pay out your accrued, unused vacation time when your employment relationship ends.

Under California law, your final paycheck must include pay for accrued vacation time.

Work hours may be regulated either by state or federal law. Regulation includes laws requiring employers to pay employees premium pay for overtime hours, or to give employees rest and/or meal breaks after a certain number of hours of work. In those states that do not regulate work hours, the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets the work hours standards for employees in that state.